Building a home on love and respect

Ever since I understood the concept of having a home of your own, I had been waiting for the moment to get a little space that I could make mine.

I was a late bloomer in terms of this concept of personal space or home. For the first 18 years of my life, I lived in my late paternal grandfather’s home with my parents, grandmother and brother.

My aunts lived with us until they got married and moved in with their in-laws or husbands. Everyone else I knew lived in their parents’ homes or their parents lived with them, regardless of their age.

My home was mine, but it was also my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins’.

It was where everyone congregated during family events. Before my father “modernised” our home, it had one great hall, two bedrooms, a large kitchen, a bathroom and a toilet downstairs.

Upstairs was divided into a large hall that housed my grandfather’s private area, where he passed away in his sleep one unfortunate night; and a creepy attic, which gave us kids chills down our spines.

The great hall, though not really great and at most a hall in the Malaysian way, was where all our “tikar” and carpets would be laid out for the whole host of the extended family when they visited. I am quite certain more than 20 people could sleep comfortably and still have room to roll around.

So in my head, that was what a home was – a place you lived in that is owned by a) your grandparents; b) your parents; c) your relatives; d) your in-laws; e) your husband; or f) your children or their spouses.

It was never fully yours, just a place you lived in until you moved on to the next chapter of your life. Especially if you were a girl. Boys would grow up to inherit their parents’ homes or buy their own; girls would marry into a home.

Seven days shy of my 18th birthday, I moved into a room of my own. Sure I had to share it with another girl, but I had a room in an apartment that had its own balcony and an attached bathroom with a bathtub! In Penang Island on top of that!

I was brought up with the understanding that I would leave home and most probably the country to pursue my studies but it never did set in my mind that home was something someone could pay a certain sum to call their own for a period of time.

From there I would move on to call a few different spots in the city of Springfield, Missouri home and then back in Penang.

It was somewhere in the midst of the moving around and not ever being able to actually do what I want to my momentary home that I started yearning to own my own home.

The sense of urgency (and despair to a certain extent) acerbated in the last four years that saw my husband and I moving into three different homes.

Seeing that property prices are not exactly in favour of, well, most of us; the search for a place of our own wasn’t easy.

But it happened. It eventually happened, and even then, the process of purchasing was drawn out, stretching out four more months than expected.

But going back to my childhood idea of how women are either born or married into their homes, I know that it is not true for every woman.

Though it ended up being true for me, it is the sad and oppressive truth for many women around the world.

But what sets my situation apart from the latter group is that I am not in a relationship or situation where I am abused, where I am considered subordinate or even a property of my husband and/or his family.

To many women, a home is nothing but a torture chamber. A woman very dear to me was once forced to move with her husband to a new place just because he wanted to live as far as possible from her work place so that she, who could not drive would be cut away from the only part of her life that brought her joy.

“This will be your only home,” he threatened her the day he drove her there.

Last night, as we were about to sleep, my husband whispered into my ear, “Tomorrow, you will sleep in your own home”.

And it truly is my own for it is the home that I am making with the person I love and respect.

At every step of this home-owning process, my likes, needs and wants were given priority as long as they stayed within the set budget.

I was the equal partner in this decision-making exercise. To us, this was not going to be his home or mine, but ours.

My home may not be lavish but every inch of it is beautiful for it was made on the foundation of our relationship. – May 24, 2015.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.